Written by

Dan Feldman

Detroit Free Press Special Writer

Dan Feldman writes for the Detroit Pistons blog PistonPowered. His opinions do not necessarily reflect those of the Detroit Free Press nor its writers. PistonPowered writers will contribute a column every Friday at freep.com/pistons. Contact Dan anytime at pistonpowered@gmail.com or on Twitter @pistonpowered.

In the NBA, teams should be very good or very bad. Between is a failure.

About the worst place a team can be is in the lower half of the lottery, picking Nos. 6-14 or so. Those teams arenít good enough to make the playoffs and arenít bad enough to have a reasonable chance at drafting a player who can turn around the team. In some circumstances, when a team makes the playoffs but is completely overmatched, picking 15-18 is just as futile.

In the last five years, the Pistons have picked No. 8, No. 9, No. 8, No. 7 and No. 15.

For the Pistons to get those two without tanking into the top end of the lottery took a little luck, obviously. If the Toronto Raptors took Drummond instead of Terrence Ross and/or the Golden State Warriors took Monroe instead of Ekpe Udoh, Dumars might already be gone.

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But they didnít, and Dumars deserves credit for drafting well.

A tired argument exists that anyone could have picked Drummond and Monroe where Dumars did, but the same people who make that point still would make it if the Pistons had drafted No. 8 instead of No. 9 in 2012 and No. 6 instead of No. 7 in 2010. As we know, and as obvious as it should have been to draft Drummond and Monroe, the teams that actually held those picks didnít.

So despite his efforts to contrary (i.e., vainly relying on highly paid veterans such as Tayshaun Prince, Richard Hamilton, Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva to lead the Pistons into the playoffs), Dumars has emerged from this down spell with two great pieces to build around.

Dumarsí failure to set the correct course for the franchise is now irrelevant. The Pistonsí direction already has been established.

It can be tweaked, but theyíre building around Drummond with Monroe, Josh Smith, Brandon Jennings and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope as key support pieces. They have the potential to add another in free agency next summer. Otherwise, the only real opportunity to add a fundamental building block is to trade those players for another building block.

In that regard, I trust Dumars much more than a theoretical replacement general manager. Tweaking already-built teams is what he does well.

Dumars is the only general manager to completely overhaul a roster while winning 50 games each season during the process.

He drafted Prince, signed Chauncey Billups, traded Stackhouse for Hamilton, traded Robinson and Curry, traded Atkins while landing Rasheed Wallace, signed Antonio McDyess and let Ben Wallace leave for Chicago. There were several other minor moves along the way, too.

By 2007-08, the Pistons were 59-23 and had a completely different roster than 2001-02 ó all while winning 50 games in each season between.

Hopefully, Dumars wonít have to try to replicate that feat again. Ideally, every current Piston meets his potential and fits in seamlessly on the court.

Obviously, thatís unlikely.

The next step of the Pistonsí plan probably will be tweaking an already-good but not-good-enough, roster. No matter how poorly he did in setting the direction of the franchise, Dumars has shown he excels at this part of the process.

The Pistons donít need a general manager to put the franchise on a certain path. That already has been done, and thereís no point in simply punishing Dumars for his mistakes in 2009-12.

Dumarsí skill align with what the Pistons need right now. He seems adept at enticing veteran free agents to join playoff teams, negotiating trades with other general managers and drafting in the lower half of the first round.

As long as thatís whatís required of the Pistonsí general manager, Dumars should hold the job.